Two motivated teachers motivated to retire

TUSTIN – Nancy Brucker is surrounded by second-graders sitting on the floor reading; she's helping them sound out the longer words. She pauses and points out decorations on the cluttered classroom walls at Arroyo Elementary School.

This summer, she will take those decorations down for the last time, ending her 30-plus years as a Tustin elementary school teacher.

She and Pioneer Middle School history teacher Jack Billings started on the same day in 1973. This year, they will retire after 37 years in the classroom.

Brucker and Billings are two of the 30 teachers retiring from the Tustin Unified School District, motivated in part by attractive retirement packages. Record numbers of teachers across Orange County have chosen to leave the classroom this year because of early retirement programs. The number of teachers retiring in Tustin has risen since the packages were introduced this year. Last year, 13 teachers retired; in the 2007-08 school year, 20 people retired.

These teachers have watched the school district expand from its rural roots to the 22,000 students who now attend Tustin schools. They have seen technology evolve from using typewriters, when Brucker and Billings were hired in 1973, to the touch-screen Smart Boards integrated with classroom computers today.

Hand-cranking the ditto machine

Billings, an eighth-grade history teacher, remembers hand-cranking ditto machines during his first years at Columbus Tustin Middle School. He later joined C.E. Utt Middle School and moved to Pioneer Middle School when it opened in Tustin Ranch in 1999. Billings and Brucker now use Smart Boards, video and the Internet in the classroom.

"Technology allows you to do different things than we did in the past, but teaching a student is still teaching a student," Billings said. "(Teaching is) understanding and caring. (Technology) only accentuates what you can do. It doesn't replace what you have to do."

The technology isn't the only thing that's changed. The students have evolved through the years, and parents have gotten more involved.

"The kids of today are much more focused academically than in the '70s," Billings said. Back then, he said, it wasn't cool to be scholarly.

In elementary school, student learning has accelerated, said Brucker, a second-grade teacher at Arroyo Elementary School. Children are more intellectual, she said, and spend less time on developmental work such as painting. And the pupils are computer-literate, she said, but their handwriting has gotten worse.

"The new teachers don't know the difference, so it's not a loss," she said.

In Brucker's second-grade classroom, a Samsung Digital Presenter uses a camera to magnify demonstrations so pupils can see. This year, pupils watched a butterfly hatch on their teacher's hand.

She doesn't rely only on technology. Brucker also has the pupils create crafts and art projects. And she uses props such as hand puppets, which are a hit with the second-graders.

"She always can make our day by her puppet voices," said Mary Norman, one of Brucker's pupils.

In retirement, the Mission Viejo resident plans to spend more time on her art projects, painting and drawing, and playing piano.

Ready for a new chapter

At age 30, Brucker left teaching to pursue other careers. She had taught previously in Texas and Florida.

"I'd been in a classroom since I was 5," she said. Brucker spent a year working as a waitress, masseuse for a chiropractor and as a sales representative. Then she came back to Arroyo Elementary School. "Teaching fits me best because I'm pretty eclectic, but it isn't all of who I am."

This year, all the numbers aligned for Brucker. She's old enough, has taught long enough and the retirement package was appealing, she said. After the school year ends, Brucker plans to travel with her husband, Robert, spend time in her garden and maybe work with service dogs.

"I must be what they call a lifelong learner, and now it's time to learn something else," she said.

Travel is also in the cards for Billings. He agreed to an early retirement package and has been on substitute pay to finish out the year. Billings had already planned to retire next year, but the incentives persuaded him to change his plans.

Now, he and his wife will see the leaves change color in New England a year earlier than he'd hoped.

"I am excited but sad," he said. "I do love what I do, and to know I'm not going to be doing that is sad, but it was eventually going to end at some point."

What they leave behind

Both teachers said they will probably return to education in some form, through volunteering or substitute teaching.

"I love to work with kids," Billings said. "I'm not burned out."

For the past 34 years, Billings has taken his students to Washington, D.C.

"When they leave class, I want them to understand that history is a living, ongoing process, and if they don't understand it, they're doomed to repeat it," Billings said. "I teach them the importance of the Bill of Rights and the Constitution as a model for the world. I want them to have pride in America."

His proudest moments are when a student tells him they've enjoyed learning history for the first time.

"I am one of the few people who can probably say, 'I would not change a single thing in my entire career,'" he said. "Not too many people can say they did what they wanted to do and always enjoyed it."

His students agree.

"He's one of the best teachers I've had," said student Peter Phan. "He helps us understand instead of just reading."

At Arroyo, Brucker has helped her students understand, particularly those struggling with numbers.

"I make math as enjoyable and successful and forgiving as I can because I know what it's like to not understand," she said. Second-graders Kayla Halle and Hunter Hughes said their math skills improved in Brucker's classroom.

"She made me a lot better at everything," Kayla said. "She's the best teacher in the whole entire universe."

One of the highlights of her career, Brucker said, is the disability awareness program, which grew out of the loss of her brother, who was in a coma for 13 years after a head injury. Brucker teaches the children about disabilities by allowing them to test out a wheelchair or learn sign language.

"I know I'll miss the children. I will miss watching learning happen and being a part of it," Brucker said. "There's nothing like being the first person to show children something and seeing the little light go on in their heads."